To George Washington from Captain James Rivers, 29 April 1780
From Captain James Rivers
Rutland [Mass.] April the 29th 1780.
Sir
Your Excellency will percieve by the few inclos’d Lines why I so earnestly entreat for Leave to go to England.1 I can assure You upon my Word that the Surgeons in the Winter had but small hopes of my recovery, but since the Spring has opened itself, I am somewhat better, nothing but my impair’d Health & shatter’d Constitution would permit me to ask so high a favor, & your known Humanity paints to me an Idea that You will not think me troublesome either with my Pen or Request, I have been extremely ill for more than 12 Months past, & am daily becoming weaker. I am with great Respect Your Excellency’s most obedt humble Servt
Jas Rivers Capt. 60th
N.B. An Offr of equal Rank will be sent out on Parole from York on my immediately arrival there, if Your Excellency will be pleas’d to comply with the above request.
ALS, DLC:GW.
1. Rivers enclosed a certificate from Royal Navy surgeon William Goldson and German surgeon Julius Friedrich Wasmus prepared at Rutland Barracks on 3 April: “We the subscribers surgeons in the service of his Britannic Majesty have according to request examined the state of Captn Rivers’ health and find him to be consumptive. It is our opinion that it will be highly requisite to try the effects of his native air as early as convenient, his disease having arose to such a stage as to endanger his life, by a further continuance in this Country” (DLC:GW). For Wasmus and his Revolutionary War service, see Doblin and Lynn, Journal of Wasmus. In his letters to GW dated 2 and 21 Nov. 1779, Rivers did not mention his health (see GW to Rivers, 20 Dec. 1779, source note).